Japanese SMGs

[Zaf1]

Split from Captured Chinese Flags--Peter

Hi,

Does anyone can identify what type of sub-machine gun on the bottom of the first photo?

[Peter H]

MP18 Bergmann used by SNLF.

Later replaced by the Type 100
http://www.wwiiguns.com/store/product_details.php?p=547

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=90085

[Peter H]

I think this is a captured Chinese version.

See discussion here on Chinese use
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 1&t=152437

[Peter H]

Soldier on left holds up a Bergmann.Chinese or Japanese?

[Zaf1]

Thanks Peter. How and when did the Japanese acquire these weapon? Was it used by SNLF or Army troops?

[Ron Sundby]

Check Taki's website, always a good place to start for Japanese equipment http://www3.plala.or.jp/takihome/ The Bergman is listed there under 'Infintry Arms'. It was used mainly by the SNLF.

Ron

[Peter H]

From: http://www.photohighway.co.jp/

Poster unknown

[Sewer King]

From the “Something different” thread:

Posed group [of SNLF troops]

Two of these SNLF troops aim the Swiss SIG-made Bergmann 7.62mm submachine guns. It is interesting that Japan picked up on the use of the SMG as early as others but did not use it as widely afterwards, despite having forces in combat throughout the same time, and the Navy's success with the Bergmann.

The following is re-edited from another thread, since the focus here is entirely on this kind of gun in Japanese service:

... I still don’t fully understand why the Japanese Army did not issue submachine guns as widely as their contemporaries, and not just to special troops.

• As supposed by three authors:
  

  Time caught up with the Japanese on submachine guns. The Type 100 was never really satisfactory, possibly because [they] had the concept of an automatic rifle in mind … rather than the concept of a submachine gun as understood by most other countries. (Smith and Smith's Small Arms of the World 9th edition, page 504)

  • Ian V. Hogg supposed that the comparatively weak 8mm round may have been a limitation on development, especially in wartime when manufacturing quality declined. Hogg notes that a good SMG would have been useful in the defensive jungle war the Japanese had to fight. (Hogg's Military Small Arms of the World 5th ed, page 106)

Japan was also far removed from the Spanish Civil War, where submachine guns were more widely used in larger-scale combat for everyone to see. Despite that recent example the British were slow to take up the new weapon, until the rude shock of German blitzkrieg through 1940 finally jarred them into hurried SMG development –- and they too went to copying the MP 28 design as the Lanchester.

• But hadn’t the Japanese also met some Soviet SMGs in Manchurian border actions up through Nomonhan, where they too had faced the latest in mechanized warfare?

I also thought that Japan did not have as much capacity for widespread stamped-steel mass manufacture as did the Germans, British, and Americans. Stamping is a key feature of the so-called “second generation” of SMG design. Most Imperial Japanese small arms were still “first generation” design of machined steel and wood.

• Stamping gun parts sound easy at first but it relies much on tool-and-die work beforehand, and quality control after, which should suit the dispersed shops and factories that carry it out. Has there been any study of Japan's wartime ordnance and metalworking industries in themselves that looked at their capacities, tendencies, and expediencies, as compared to those of the other combatants?

Japan’s ordnance research and development was said to be slowed and diffused by rivalries and division between the armed forces, the industries, and universities. But this would seem to apply more to higher technologies such as radar, atomic science, or jet propulsion. From the lower technology of small arms there were many examples from which to choose a proven, cheaply-made submachine gun, from both allies and enemies.

Finally, the Army had a tradition of close combat, with the spirit of the bayonet. Would it have made less tactical place for submachine guns in the Army at large?

Maybe the limits of Japanese SMG development and issue were due to a combination of some or all of these reasons?

It may simply be coincidental, and not meant to say it was typical -- but two different pieces of war art show Japanese spirit of attack with “cold steel” defeating enemies armed with submachine guns, here and here again.

-– Alan

[Peter H]

Thanks Alan.

These appear to be rear photos of the fifth & sixth photos already posted in this thread.

[Peter H]

SMG also seen here

[Peter H]

From: http://www.photohighway.co.jp/ImageAlbu ... 0&cnt=4016

[Peter H]

Also the Nambu Type II
http://www.dragonsoffire.com/Type-II--Model-A.php

Model A



Model B

[Peter H]

From WWII:The Directory of Weapons,Chris Bishop,page 254

[Peter H]

Shanghai 1937

[Peter H]

More SNLF